Santa Claus dances like a jerk

This life-size dancing Santa Claus doll was at pho tonight, and presumably will be there until that pagan whatchamacallit day. It sings songs in French and dances. And as we noticed, its left hand moves somewhat... suggestively. The clacking sound the hand makes as it hits the belt buckle will certainly leave a lasting impression.

I won't be going on his lap anytime soon.

- RG>

BBC Rail Safety applies to cyclists, too

BBC show Top Gear's host Jeremy Clarkson has an important safety message about level train crossings:

Of course, this life-saving lesson applies to cyclists and pedestrians, too. If you're going to ride the wrong way across a bus route or walk across a restricted-access freeway, always wear a helmet and high-visibility jacket.

- RG>

Ottawa City Hall: Let Me Be Open

Back on March 1, there was a report presented to the City of Ottawa's little-known Information Technology Sub-Committee of the Corporate Services and Economic Development Committee about Open Data. It made its way up to Council before being referred back to ITS, who will be discussing it tomorrow (Monday) afternoon.

It's important that Council pass this policy, but what does it mean?

Nowadays, when you visit a website, what's really happening is a machine (specifically a webserver) is looking up entries in a database, then plugging the results into a template that makes it nice for you to look at.

Case in point, this blog is stored in a database on Google's servers, and it could be presented in a variety of ways. That's how how I could change the look and feel of my blog without having to republish every single entry. It's also you can pull the RSS feed of my blog in order to read it in a format that is more suited to your viewing habits (especially convenient because I don't publish on a regular basis).

Blogs are one form of data, but our governments also produce a vast amount of data. As a simple example, bus schedules. Ten years ago, if you wanted to know when the next bus was supposed to come, you could either check out the schedule posted at the bus stop or you could find a printed schedule, which would tell you when the bus was to come to the nearest timepoint.

Nowadays, OC Transpo's website can look up the schedule for the exact place you want to get on the bus and tell you when it is supposed to arrive.

But the databases that store this information are locked up with OC Transpo. If you wanted to create a more convenient interface, like Craig Davey did, you'd have to file a freedom of information requestto access that data.

Not so with an Open Data policy. While machine-readable datasets may not be the sexiest topic, the ability to mash them up and interpret them in the context of other datasets is invaluable is a tremendous power.

This five-and-a-half minute talk by Tim Berners-Lee (the man who created the World Wide Web) gives some examples of how open data can be useful. In one case, a map of water main access overlaid on a map of the race of residents showed clearly that only white people had clean water in an Ohio neighbourhood.

Closer to home, there is a website called OpenParliament.ca, which parses the Hansard transcript and allows you to browse by MP, by topic, and in other ways. David Eaves, who created the website, also created www.datadotgc.ca, which publishes a list of known Government of Canada datasets.

Berners-Lee is part of an Open Data movement that is pushing governments and institutions at all levels to release their data, not only for the media to be able to correlate the previously uncorrelatable, but also so that enterprising individuals can make that data useful for the public, as with the OCTranspo.net site.

As a second example of what you can do with these types of datasets, here is Gary Flake with a TED presentation about Microsoft Pivot, which allows useful browsing not only of demographic data, but even more tangible information like Time Magazine covers:

One of the areas of contention at Ottawa City Hall was that it would cost the City a certain amount of money (a couple hundred thousand dollars at the most) to release this data, so why not charge companies like Google and Microsoft when they want to use it?

This, unfortunately, shuts out people like Davey and Eaves--regular citizens with a bit of programming skill who want to make existing information more useful and more accessible to people.

I have little doubt that the programs created by individuals using open data from the City of Ottawa would bring a substantial return on the meagre investment required for the City to publish that information in the first place. Far more useful than if the City put that money into creating those resources itself.

And if there's any better example for the need for this type of service, the agenda for tomorrow's meeting would have been posted to the City's website a week earlier. But I only heard about it on Friday afternoon in the City's "meetings next week" e-mail. If Council and Committee agendas and minutes were released as part of an Open Data policy, I would have written this post a week before the meeting, instead of the night before.

- RG>

Interesting video on motivation and "flow"

XUP (and others, I'm sure) was wondering in a comment to a previous post how I could possibly forget to eat meals.

This TEDtalk presentation by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi* explains it well, and presents other paradigms to help me understand other things about myself. Specifically, he describes the state of ecstasy (being outside your normal functioning) around 9 minutes in, and talks about "flow"** (a.k.a. '[being in] the zone') further on, which is an extension of this. Around 15 minutes, he shows a really neat graph*** to describe one's state given variable skill and challenge when faced with a given task (or lack thereof).

It's a bit longwinded, but it gives lots of food for thought:

Unfortunately for me, I tend to experience "flow" right around the last hour or two of my work day. Sometimes I'll work late to take advantage of it, or I'll stay at the office after work to tackle some non-work project (thank goodness for internet access at work! That doesn't block Google and other stuff****!)

Similarly, when I plan to spend a weekend doing an hours-long project, I usually have the most energy to begin it around 11pm on the Sunday.

* I copy-pasted it; I haven't tried pronouncing it yet.
** No, I'm not talking about the monthly kind.
*** Fans of graphs should enjoy the webcomic Indexed
**** No, by "other stuff" I don't mean porn, thank you.

- RG>

A lesson on bus selection for OC Transpo

I'm a bit of a transit geek, and while I'm nowhere near as hardcore as some people, I do know that OC Transpo has made some questionable decisions on bus selection. The old Ikarus articulated buses, for example, had to be cannibalized to maintain them, then couldn't even be given away once decommissioned (AFAIK they may still be sitting in a field somewhere). Then there's the buses they bought in the '90s, whose windows only opened at the top because the buses came with air conditioning, but the A/C had been irreversibly removed as a cost saving measure early in their lifetime, resulting in some very uncomfortable buses.

More recently, OC Transpo bought 365 of the hump-backed buses in the 4200 series starting in 2004, and is one of very few transit services to have bought the now-discontinued model, meaning parts will likely be in short supply when it comes time for their overhaul nine years after purchase. The three double-decker buses it recently purchased (with the possibility of buying more) require a whole new garage to be built to service them, because three axles fit in the 40-foot frame instead of the usual two, and thus three lifts are needed--not to mention an extra-tall garage door. It was recently reported that OC Transpo does not have a garage that is licensed to certify buses for their safety inspections that has doors tall enough to accommodate the double-deckers. The inspections will have to be outsourced.

Oh, and did you know that the articulated buses in OC Transpo's fleet have four-cylinder engines, instead of the more popular six-cylinder option? That'll also hurt your resale value (as will the windshields popping out only a couple of years into service).

All this leads me to believe that OC Transpo doesn't properly test buses before selecting them.

The following BBC video shows some thorough testing of different styles of buses available in the UK. The test takes into account passenger comfort, accessibility, and speed of service. The test was also conducted on a closed circuit, to avoid casualties to cyclists and pedestrians.

OC Transpo, I hope you're paying attention.

- RG>

The Yogourt Rant

In a recent post, I referred to "The Yogourt Rant." It's a somewhat boilerplate rant of mine that many people who know me have heard in one form or another.

A fellow named Barry Schwartz wrote a book called "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less," which talks about this phenomenon. I haven't read Shwartz's book (yet), but he describes it well in his (20-minute) 2005 TEDTalk: [disclaimer: RG takes no responsibility for the incredible amounts of time you lose watching TED videos]

I had heard of this principle, probably even seen this very video, a few years ago, and it certainly resonates with me. Since then, I had forgotten the term "paradox of choice" and where I had heard it, but I had lived it and reconstructed it.

In the yogourt aisle.

The concept carries to many of my consumer-purchase experiences (for example, I refuse to specify a "chocolate" Frosty at Wendy's), but its purest form is when I'm buying yogourt.

When I go to the supermarket and I want to buy yogourt, it takes me forever.

For one, they're sorted by brand. I'm not interested in brands, I'm interested in flavour--raspberry. But because of the way the products are sorted, I have to first determine which type I want before I can decide on flavour.

This is harder than it looks. There are at least a dozen different types of yogourt on the shelf. Some types are the same brand, but different varieties--like, say, Danone Silhouette yogourt, Danone Creamy yogourt, and Danone Activia yogourt. (To further confuse you, "Danone" is known as "Dannon" in the U.S.)

Some are from the same company, but different "quality" brands, like President's Choice brand yogourt, the No Name brand yogourt, and the Blue Menu yogourt, all of which are from the same company. Often these brands may vary in quality and/or health factor, or at least, so say the packages.

Some are different brands' version of essentially the same product. Metaphorically speaking, the "Coke" and "Pepsi" yogourts, and the "Diet Coke" and "Diet Pepsi" ones. Similar price, similar product, similar taste, different brand.

Then there are the specialty brands, like the middle-eastern not-yogourt yogourt, goat's milk yogourt, and the organic yogourt with Omega 3 and "active bacteria cultures". I'm sure there's Soygurt out there, too, and other horrible things that go to extraordinary lengths to distract me from finding ordinary raspberry yogourt.

And without tasting them, how do you differentiate between these alternatives? Price? Perhaps, but is this one priced higher because it tastes better, or because it's healthier for you? Or simply because that brand costs more? Or do they push the health and social benefits of this one to make up for how much it offends the palette?

I know what I want when I shop for yogourt. I want raspberry yogourt. I want it in the large container, because the small ones are a waste of packaging. I don't want the fat-free stuff, because yogourt is supposed to have fat, and whatever additives and processing they used to make it fat-free is probably worse for you than the fat itself. I don't want the creamy stuff, but I don't mind unstirred yogourt. I don't want the organic stuff because all organic yogourt I've tried so far is disgusting. And I don't want the cheap stuff that has a dollar less taste for forty cents less price.

All of this is a very complicated way of saying I want simple raspberry yogourt.

So I stand in front of the yogourt section, staring bemusedly at the wall of containers in front of me. As Barry Schmidt put it, I'm paralyzed. I stand there for five whole minutes, scanning the brightly-illuminated array, processing the information that's pouring in, mentally arranging each group of flavours into brands, and categorizing each brand, scrutinizing each one until I find the one group of containers in which is the one yogourt that I had set out to find. On the home stretch, all that remains is to select the desired flavour from the row of six containers that I excruciatingly parsed from the wall of plastic jugs.

And they're out of raspberry.

Fuck.

***

Every few months, I empty my fridge of yogourt containers, some not even opened, all of them long expired. There are usually two or three different brands, though they're all raspberry. The tubs are bulging from the chemical and biological metamorphoses they're struggling desperately to contain; I don't want to know what's inside them. Probably a lot more than just "active bacteria cultures".

I don't know why I even bother buying yogourt. Do I even actually like it? Am I buying it as a quasi-healthy alternative to pudding? Because I tend to throw out more of it than I end up eating. Maybe I just think I want to eat it so that I have to confront my fear of the yogourt-buying process. Maybe I subconsciously like the stress of buying yogourt, like some form of mental dairy-bondage.

But whatever my reason for buying yogourt, it's clear that I don't eat nearly enough of it to know which kind I should buy when I shop for more.

Hence the rant.

- RG>

On-street rail: a century-old non-problem

In reading the background papers for the LRT Technology Forum tomorrow morning, much ado is made about segregated corridors. That is to say, if you don't put rail in a tunnel or up in the air, you need to put up fences to keep pedestrians from crossing the line, or else chaos will result.

So it's interesting that I came upon a video of Vancouver Streetcar traffic in 1907, which clearly shows pedestrians, cyclists and horse-drawn carriages crossing the streetcar tracks with no difficulty or conflict. (Nor, I might add, signals to tell them when and where to cross)

If they put light rail along the Western Parkway (emphasis on "if"), would tracks with a train passing promptly every 30 or 60 seconds really be as dangerous to cross as, say, the four lanes of constant car and bus traffic already there?

Why don't we have fences along, say, Carling?

Yet another bias in our car-based culture. Cars and buses are safe because they're normal, trains are dangerous because we're not used to them.

- RG>

A partial retraction

On a previous post, "SCANning the flames of open-mindedness", I talked about how I responded by e-mail to the following extract from a draft set of community association minutes:

From the minutes: "[Person] reported on the anti-SCAN meeting at the library where an NDP MPP from Toronto made disparaging remarks about SCAN and neighbourhood watch groups."

With the following comment:

From RG: "I'm quite concerned at this summary of the SCAN meeting. Whatever 'disparaging remarks' might have been made by an MPP from Toronto (boo hoo), there were legitimate concerns raised by the organizers of the meeting about the negative consequences of SCAN legislation which do not seem to have been raised in this report. ...

It was brought to my attention tonight that my "boo hoo" comment was overly broad.

It seems that I overlooked the fact that "disparaging remarks about SCAN and neighbourhood watch groups" can be parsed to "disparaging remarks about SCAN" and "disparaging remarks about neighbourhood watch groups".

Due to my focus on SCAN (and my concern that the minutes extract did not seem to discuss SCAN at all), I saw the whole sentence as being the first interpretation ("...about SCAN"), and concluded that disparaging remarks about legislation is irrelevant, since legislation doesn't have feelings.

It turns out that the remarks referenced in the minutes which where of concern to [Person] were comments by Toronto-area NDP MPP Cheri Di Novo equating the pro-SCAN people (i.e. those encapsulated by the minutes' phrase "neighbourhood watch groups") to Stasi, and [Person] felt it to be very inappropriate, especially coming from an MPP like Ms. Di Novo.

[Person] felt that this type of "Stasi" reference is a bullying type of comment that keeps people from being involved in discussions, and while I'm the type of person who generally ignores insults directed at me when not relevant to the discussion, I agree with her clarified comment: name-calling, especially by an MPP, is not productive to a conversation. (I'm still not sure if it's relevant to an Ottawa community association, but it's an insult nonetheless)

Furthermore, I'm glad I qualified my comments in the same blog entry when I wrote:

The complaints made by [person] are very similar to the common accusation of not being "open-minded". I fully admit that this person did NOT say anything to that effect.

...

While, again, [person] didn't accuse me of being close-minded, she seems to use the very same arguments and techniques explained in the video:

...

In fact, after watching that video, I can confidently claim that [person] is being close-minded, and I'd love to see her prove otherwise.

And [person] did indeed prove otherwise.

I'm glad that she approached me so that I could better understand her position.

(Now if only someone can do the same thing about SCAN!)

Also, it turns out the community association did vote to support SCAN, however this was two years ago, so it therefore could only have been in principle, and not the specific legislation presented by Yasir Naqvi. I could (and plan to) reopen the question of the association's support of SCAN based on its negative side-effects. The association amended the minutes to clarify "that the discussion about the anti-SCAN meeting was not presented as a detailed or official report of that event."

- RG>

SCANning the flames of open-mindedness

[Edit: On June 3, 2009, I retracted part of my comments below in the following blog post: http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2009/06/partial-retraction.html]

Recently, I responded to the previous months' minutes of a local community association, which included a mention of the recent panel discussion held by People Against SCAN, an event I blogged about shortly thereafter (as did zoom!).

The minutes included the following review of the SCAN meeting:

From the minutes: "[Person] reported on the anti-SCAN meeting at the library where an NDP MPP from Toronto made disparaging remarks about SCAN and neighbourhood watch groups."

Now, I don't know what was said at the community association meeting, as I had a prior commitment the previous month, so I have no way of telling whether the summary accurately reflected the discussion on the SCAN event. But I do know that this one-sentence summary does not come close to reflecting the concerns raised by the anti-SCAN people. It would have been just as useful(less) to say 'There was an event about SCAN, but it was organized by people who don't like SCAN, so it's not important.'

So I responded:

From RG: "I'm quite concerned at this summary of the SCAN meeting. Whatever 'disparaging remarks' might have been made by an MPP from Toronto (boo hoo), there were legitimate concerns raised by the organizers of the meeting about the negative consequences of SCAN legislation which do not seem to have been raised in this report.

"I was at the [anti-SCAN] meeting and frankly I think that SCAN legislation is both unnecessary for Ottawa's environment and highly excessive for what it proposes to do. It was unfortunate that Mr. Naqvi had to leave the meeting right at the beginning of the question session, leaving nobody to respond to the concerns raised by members of the audience.

"I suggest that Board members have a glance at the website of People Against SCAN, who organized the meeting, and have a look at the summaries of that meeting that are referenced on their front page: www.peopleagainstscan.com

"Sincerely,"
etc.

This drew a response from the [person] mentioned in the minutes. Among her other comments, with which I disagree but nonetheless are reasonable (I've commented them out in the HTML code of the message if you really want to see them), was this final line:

From [Person]: "Moreover, I resent the use of this format [i.e. e-mail] for bullying and inflamatory and unproductive comments not unlike the ones made at the anti-SCAN meeting."

I can't figure out what in my comment was "bullying" (nor of whom), and why it's "inflammatory" to call someone out for an ad-hominem attack. Maybe "inflammatory" is to debates as "safer" is to legislation, where if someone applies the label, it must be true.

I'm also trying to figure out how a piece of legislation can have feelings, and why this person feels that it's relevant to the community association when an NDP MPP from Toronto hurts those feelings. [Edit 2009-06-03: As clarified in my partial retraction of my comments, she was referring to "disparaging remarks about ... neighbourhood watch groups," specifically a comment where NDP MPP Cheri Di Novo compared such groups to Stasi. Not "disparaging remarks about SCAN [full stop]".]

And when I point out further resources on the legislation, it's "unproductive", whereas the irrelevant comments made by [person] somehow are not.

I didn't bother to elaborate these points by e-mail. Instead, the substantive part of my subsequent response was thus:

From RG: "The onus is on the proposer of legislation to prove that it will not have negative consequences, and it is the responsibility of all concerned to raise concerns about such legislation. Dismissing such criticism is harmful to democracy."

And I left it at that.


The complaints made by [person] are very similar to the common accusation of not being "open-minded". I fully admit that this person did NOT say anything to that effect.

But imagine my delight tonight when I stumble upon Dan Gardner's blog, Katzenjammer, wherein he's posted this delightful video explaining what it really means to be open-minded.

While, again, [person] didn't accuse me of being close-minded, she seems to use the very same arguments and techniques explained in the video:

In fact, after watching that video, I can confidently claim that [person] is being close-minded, and I'd love to see her prove otherwise.

[Edit 2009-06-03: she did prove otherwise, as she and I had differing interpretations of the draft minutes, as discussed in my partial retraction of my comments. Spoiler: her interpretation was more complete than mine.]

- RG>

A. Whitney Brown Supports the Troops

Someone pointed this out, and I thought it was most relevant. Watching this video really opened my eyes to something I had taken for granted for my entire life up to this point.

From today forward, my life will be defined as that which came before, and that which came after knowing that A. Whitney Brown supports the troops.

I mean, I thought I supported Motherhood and Apple Pie, but nothing like A. Whitney Brown supports the troops.

I'll let him tell it in his own words:



(Also see the sequel: "I support the Troops Still")

- RG>

Into the Wild

So last night, after finishing late at work, I headed to the coffeeshop to relax and to catch up on a bunch of work.

No sooner did I sit down with my tea did a friend of mine walk in and invite me to share in her stash of passes to an advance screening of a film--Into the Wild. The film started in less than an hour. Naturally, I went.

Boy did I make the right choice.

Right from the start, I could tell I'd click with this film.

It's based on a true story, starting off at the main character's college graduation, where he laments the artifice of society that has been constructed around him, and the goals that people have to achieve these empty status symbols.

He chooses to cut off all ties, and starts living a life of his own with nothing but the clothes on his back and his own two feet.

In the year or so of time the film covers, he Lives, with a capital L. That is to say, he experiences life far more deeply and truly than I fear I may ever live mine.

About halfway through, he decides that his goal is to go up into the bowels of Alaska, away from all society, living completely off the land. You know he makes it there, because the film switches between his journey in Alaska and his journey to get there.


I am in awe of this film. It reminded me to put things into perspective, to really evaluate the decisions I make as a member of society. To justify the way I live from the ground up, not based on what others have done before.

On my way home, I bumped into a friend of mine who is has been an active participant in the Canadian Friends of Burma for a few years. His committee is organizing Burma related events right now, including a film tonight at Ottawa Cinema Politica, and a demonstration tomorrow at noon on Parliament Hill.

After walking with him to where he was going, I went home, and just laid in the backyard, staring at the stars and collecting my thoughts, reflecting on what I had just seen in this film.

It reminded me that there are risks in life in everything you do. As much as you try to preserve your own existence, you can't eliminate those risks, and when you try to, you keep yourself (at least in part) from Living. You have to balance the preservation of life with the realization of life; you can never be completely in control, so don't try to be.

Now, I'll tell you to see this film, but please don't pay for it. As great a film it was, it was produced by Sony BMG, who has been part of the coalition trying to restrict artistic expression for corporate profit by buying out politicians the world over. (Well, also I don't want to look like a shill because I got a free pass to an advance screening)

- RG>

Why We Fight - And why we must SMAP

There is a very good documentary called "Why We Fight". You can watch it in four parts on YouTube at This Link. I've also embedded part one into this post, below.

Among the other storylines, including President Eisenhower's worryingly accurate warning about the power of the Military-Industrial complex, is one of a retired New York Police Department sergeant, whose son worked in the World Trade Center and died on 9/11.

This officer's story shows how important messages like "Saddam Hussein wasn't behind 9/11" can be hidden behind carefully crafted campaigns and slogans. This is important in the "Support Our Troops" ribbon debate, because the message "You don't have to support the war to support the troops" is another one that isn't obvious when you see the ribbons.

On Wednesday morning, when I go out there with a couple of buddies with "Support Motherhood and Apple Pie" paraphernalia, I will be proving a similar point. I expect many people to get angry at us. And their anger will not be because we are supporting Motherhood and Apple Pie. Their anger will be at the unwritten message of our ribbons.

Of course, the message behind my campaign is that "Support Our Troops" ribbons should not be on police cars. While I disagree with them, I don't have any problem with the right of individuals to put these ribbons on their own--private--vehicles.

If people come away from my demonstration thinking that my ribbons mean anything other than "Support Our Troops Ribbons Shouldn't Be On Police Cars," then I will have proven my point: that the ribbons say more than just what they say.

And therefore, they don't belong on our cruisers.

Here is part 1 of the documentary Why We Fight:

I encourage you to support the filmmakers by purchasing a DVD of the documentary. (I am unaffiliated with them or the documentary)

- RG>